The Lemonade Stand
by mei-san
Summary: Hermione mans a lemonade stand at a school fair. Will her promised "cooling and refreshing" lemonade really do the job, or will Malfoy's rampant hormones prove to be too active to be cooled down with the innocent drink?


Hermione had always dreamed of starting a lemonade stand. Ever since she was five and had seen the neighbouring girls set up one in front of their house- those girls, who at nine had seemed so impossibly glamorous to the five year old Hermione. She wanted a muggle style one, wooden stall, poster board hand drawn sign and most importantly, paper cups with little daisies printed on them.

That was why she had volunteered to run a stand of her choosing at the carnival that Dumbledore had sanctioned to celebrate the passing of spring. Dumbledore, always enthusiastic about Muggle things- if not with the exuberance shown by the zealous Mr. Weasley- had encouraged her greatly, and had helped her hunt down those things which were hard to find in a magical castle, such as a lemon squeezer and paper cups.

Obviously, the sign was the most important part. She was almost perfectly faithful to her childhood recollections of the neighbour's lemonade stand, and had spent most of the previous night painting her sign exactly like the one in her memories. 'Refreshing and Cooling Lemonade' the sign said, embellished with a picture of two men in the desert. The man with the glass of the lemonade was fresh looking, while the one without was sweating and flapping his robes in effort to get some breeze.

She had been doing a brisk business all morning. Harry and Ron were at the neighbouring stand- a carnival game which involved trying to throw three quaffles through an impossibly small hoop (she knew it was impossibly small- she had tried to get the damn quaffles in for almost an hour earlier, and had managed one)- and they had had a happy morning, chatting and laughing.

The sunlight smelt sweet with those scents characteristic of spring- the air carried a smell of something vaguely floral and of course the tang of lemons that reminded her of spring cleaning and her mother's furniture polish. She felt as though everything was sweetness and light, and it was on the fine day.

That is, she had found the day enjoyable until Malfoy and his Slytherin cronies had gathered in front of her stall, making a dark circle around the buttery yellow of the hand painted wood and the cheerful pinks and blues of her sign. Harry and Ron had gone on break about five minutes before, insisting to no avail that she come with them and enjoy the carnival. There appeared no champion for her in sight.

"Oh, look. How very quaint," Blaise Zabini drawled. "The mudblood is selling warm piss in a cup." She flashed a malicious smile at Hermione and returned to examining her perfect manicure, now that her insult of the day had been accomplished.

"Is _that _what they drink in muggle-land?" Pansy asked with a titter. "No wonder your complexion is always so... off." Hermione flushed up her neck, although the skin on her face was smooth and unblemished.

"Did you want something?" Hermione asked insolently, showing rare defiance to the Slytherin crowd. It wasn't that she succumbed to the pressure that he Slytherin group placed upon her, it was just that Harry and Ron so often reacted first to the mean comments, not leaving her with much of anything to say or to do in retaliation.

"Just to say hello to our favourite mudblood," Malfoy drawled insolently, his arm lightly about Pansy's back and his hand resting on her shoulder.

Crabbe and Goyle laughed at the crack, just as good lapdogs would.

"Hello," Hermione said; her eyes slitted a bit. "Now you can go. By the way Blaise, it would be cold piss in a cup. See?" she gestured with her hand at the glass pitcher resting on the stand, in which several large pieces of ice floated.

Pansy and Blaise were content to wander off to one of the stalls where a Slytherin girl had set up a scented candle shop (after Blaise shot Hermione a poisonous look), leaving the boys (and she used the term loosely, because one could never be too sure with that ponce, Malfoy) behind.

She looked up at him in avid dislike and intense annoyance. "Could you move please?" she huffed, blowing an exasperate stream of air up to ruffle her bangs.

"Why?" Malfoy drawled, bending over and sliding his elbows onto the counter, so that his face was almost at the same height as hers. He had gotten quite a bit of sun, she noticed, detachedly. His nose was pink, as were his cheeks. She hadn't realised that his skin would tan; he was usually as white as an albino.

"Because you're blocking any customers that I may have otherwise had!" she said, as though the answer to his question was obvious.

"Doesn't look like you've got too many other customers," Malfoy said with a smirk. "Maybe they don't think that mudblood piss in a cup looks too appetising either."

Crabbe and Goyle tittered at this last remark. If that sounded rather frightening, that's because it was. Their breaths heaved in and out and sounded rather like someone with emphysema without an oxygen tank. Their breaths mingled in the clean, spring air, overpowering it with a stench of decaying cakes and plaque. Her parents would have cried.

Malfoy realised that his two oafs were making great fools of themselves and reached around to cuff them on the heads. "Go run along and play," he ordered- with what she would almost characterise as dislike. "I have a mudblood to harass here."

"Ok...Malfoy...see...errr you... uh, later," Crabbe (or was it Goyle?) managed to stammer out. The two lumps swung their rather large forms around and lumbered off.

He turned back around to Hermione who wore a very "put-upon" expression on her face. "What?" Malfoy barked. "Your superior intelligence can't bear to be in contact with them? You have a serious superiority complex!"

"Looks who's talking, Mr. I'm-a-very-rich-pureblood-so-everyone-not-in-my-social-class-bugger-off Malfoy! If anyone has a superiority complex around here, it's you!"

"Can you honestly say that you don't demean other people who you deem less intelligent than yourself?" he demanded of her, leaning his elbows once again on the table.

"Can you honestly say that you don't look down at mudbloods," he flinched almost invisibly at her easy usage of the term, "and anyone who's daddy doesn't make as much money as yours?" she asked.

"Well, better to be a rich pureblood than a bourgeoisie mudblood" he suddenly found his voice rising in a manner completely beyond his control.

"At least, I don't get beaten in every class by a bourgeoisie mudblood," she said, confident that there was nothing he could reply intelligently to that.

"At least I don't hang around with a pathetic puppet of Dumbledore's and the scum on the bottom of the pureblood pond!" he proclaimed maliciously.

"Well, at least my 'friends' can use words larger than one syllable upon occasion!" Hermione shouted, her colouring focused at two high points on her cheekbones. Belatedly she realised that she had insulted Harry and Ron in a backhand sort of way. She hoped that Malfoy wouldn't pick up on it.

But of course, as he was wont to do, he did exactly the opposite of what she hoped he would. "Upon occasion, Granger?" he crowed. "Are those knuckleheads and their inane conversation and grunting starting to get to you?"

Hermione held her tongue, knowing full well that if she retorted, he would take it as affirmation of her insult upon Harry and Ron.

"Cat got your tongue, Granger?" he asked, doing a very gleeful little dance which he stopped as soon as he realised that she was watching. As soon as he realised that she was not going to respond to his baiting on this topic, he moved on to another.

Malfoy seemed to have bought the '101 Sure Fire Ways to Piss Off Hermione Granger' manual, because he always seemed to know which buttons to push. "Speaking of Potty and the Weasel, which of their company do you enjoy more?"

"I enjoy both of their company equally," Hermione said. "However, I'm sure that you cannot say the same of your henchmen."

"I'm equally sure that I can, Granger. You are wrong!" he replied.

"How can you possibly enjoy the company of those two great lumps?" she asked, stunned out of her snarky mood by this startling revelation.

"I didn't say that I enjoyed their company, Granger. Honestly, for the top-ranked witch in our year, you can be a bit of a thicko!" As usual with Malfoy, he overshadowed a compliment to her with an insult, almost before she had managed to suss the fact that he had complimented her.

"Yes you did, Malfoy! I said 'I'm sure that you can't say the same thing about Crabbe and Goyle' and you said 'I'm sure I can'."

"No, I concurred with the fact that I enjoy both Crabbe and Goyle's company equally little!" he said, with a bit of a grin creeping out behind his perpetual smirk. "Besides, you said 'I'm sure that you cannot say the same of your henchmen', not 'I'm sure that you can't say the same thing about Crabbe and Goyle'!"

"I'm quite sure that I said whatever I just repeated to you!"

"Oh no you didn-"

"Oh yes I did-"

"No you didn-"

"I'm sure that I-"

"I'm sure I know-"

"What I said."

"What I heard."

"Besides," snapped Hermione. "It's not as though it has any bearing on the real argument anyway. Put up or shut up, Malfoy. If you're not going to get some lemonade from my stall, shut up and go away!"

"Fine," said Malfoy. "One of those please," he reluctantly pointed at the glass pitcher and the cups, almost managing to mask his revulsion.

"You don't have to get one, Malfoy. You could just go away," Hermione suggested.

"Is that what you want, Granger?" he asked, bending down once again, to place his elbows on the counter and lean in towards her.

"I-I-I..." the befuddled girl managed to stammer out.

"You-you-you what?" Malfoy mocked her, a slow crocodile's grin making its way onto his face.

Hermione closed her eyes briefly, in hopes of regaining her sanity. For some reason the ferret's weird behaviour was sort of appealing to her!

When she opened her eyes, she found that his nose was barely touching hers, and that their heads were so close together that his slate eyes had merged into one great eye in the middle of his forehead.

She found herself getting very heated. In a moment of clarity, she jerked her head away from his, grabbing the nearest cup of lemonade and chugging it down, in hopes of calming her raging temperature.

"If you think that that's going to cool you off, you're mistaken," Malfoy drawled in a superior manner.

"Oh?" she asked pointedly. "I think I feel cooler already. Besides, can't you read?" she indicated her sign, advertising the 'Cooling and Refreshing Lemonade'.

He grabbed the back of her head then, and dragged her halfway over the stall to kiss her. He slid his tongue between her lips, coaxingly, and she opened her mouth a sliver in response. It was a _very _good kiss.

However, he pushed away from her, a moment later, effectively breaking it.

"What?" she asked quietly, and begun to laugh as he picked up the whole pitcher of lemonade and proceeded to consume it, to the very dregs.

"I don't feel any cooler, Granger," he pouted. "That's false advertising."

She smirked at him and wordlessly pointed to a small black smudge in the corner of her sign.

He looked curiously at her. "Read it and weep," she proclaimed.

He hopped up on the stall and squinted his eyes, tilting his head first to the left, then to the right, in an attempt to read the visionary miniature clause that was printed there.

"This lemonade stand and all affiliated with it hereby renounce any and all legal responsibilities for parties not satisfied with their 'cooling and refreshing' experience if indignant parties are suffering from any of the following conditions:

menopause

An overactive Pituitary Gland

Apoplexy

...

"Obviously I was a girl guide," she said, smiling at him from underneath her eyelashes.

"Yes, but are you prepared for this?" Draco asked, before walking behind the stall and kissing her.

"I didn't have time to get ready," she smirked at him. "Maybe you should try it again."

"Maybe..." he allowed his voice to trail off, as the two sank to the ground, behind the stall, not to emerge for several well spent hours.


End file.
